mark 'porkchop' holder Let It Slide (LP, £19.95)

label: alive

New album by guitarist/harmonicist/singer Mark Porkchop Holder, the pretty boy of punk blues is back! Boogie, sans bullshit. Dirty roadhouse music. Juke Joint jamming. Swamp rock. Too rock for blues, too blues for rock, the music is hungry, hard and mean. – Chattanooga Pulse. “Not many things in life make me happier than the return of a bon-a-fide badass bluesman/guitar slinger, especially in that beautiful happenstance between blues and garage rock. Enter the last of the mysteriously missing trio from Tennessee, The Black Diamond Heavies, James Leg aka John Wesley Myers has amassed some delectable records in the past few years, drummer Van Campbell popped up in a smoking jaunt with Left Lane Cruiser’s Fredrick “Joe” Evans IV just last year, and now the great, Mark “Porkchop” Holder, is back in action with a power trio and it's fire in a barrel. If the Rolling Stones camped with Howlin’ Wolf and Billy Gibbons on trucker speed for the weekend with a fuzz pedal, this would be its precious procreation. “My Black Name” is a charged up garage blues littered with succulent slide licks and tasty crunch, battling the demons that haunt a man’s reputation with war eyes and a big stick. Holder adds, ““My Black Name” is a song about having your reputation precede you, the only way to deal honestly with having a rep, good or bad, is to own it. It's easier to sing it than to live it." No Depression / Tracks 1. Let It Slide 2. Disappearing 3. My Black Name 4. Headlights 5. 38 6. Let It Slide (Reprise) 7. Stagger Lee 8. Stranger 9. Baby Please Don't Go